Awake
by HardfacedQueenofMisadventure
Summary: "...he could not cast the dream he'd had from his mind, if it had even been a dream at all." Upon waking, Neo is immediately thrust into another, stranger dream, one that he cannot wake up from. AKA, the Metacortex escape scene from the first film. T for some bad language.


**It seems that every time I try to settle down and watch the Matrix, I have an impossible-to-ignore brainwave. Oh well, I take my inspiration as it comes. This is a piece in the same style as Mindfields – an in-depth look at a certain scene from the film. In fact, this piece follows on from Mindfields pretty closely, but you don't have to have read that to understand this.  
Film dialogue used for purposes of accuracy: again, I do not own it, nor do I claim to.  
**

* * *

Thomas' mouth was dry as he sat at his desk, and his head throbbed, though he'd had nothing alcoholic to drink the night before. Try as he may, he could not cast the dream he'd had from his mind, if it had even been a dream at all. He couldn't tell anymore; he didn't remember going home or falling asleep, but everything he'd seen, heard and felt seemed far too vivid to be a mere product of his mind. Somehow, his thoughts kept drifting back to that woman, back to Trinity. The look in her eyes as she'd approached him for the first time, her proximity to him, the memory of her touch sending ghost-shivers through his body. Waves of strange heat cascaded over his body, preceded by a strange tingling in his skin: either he was still burning from Rhinehart's lecture or something else was at play, something he couldn't place.  
His computer sat dormant; he couldn't even contemplate working today. A stupid decision, especially given the lecture he'd just received, but his mind was wandering in strange places, and nothing he could do would return it.

"_Thomas Anderson?" _He looked up hesitantly, coming face to face with a young delivery boy holding a package. _I didn't order anything…_

"Yeah," he replied nonchalantly. "That's me." _What harm could it possibly cause? _He signed where he was told, feeling an almost-guilty sensation wash over him as he did so, as if he'd done something very, very wrong.

"Have a nice day." That one sentence filled him with a cold, plunging suspicion; intuition, he supposed. The package was pretty light, too light to be a bomb or anything particularly dangerous. Curiosity suddenly overrode common sense as he briskly tore into the packaging and tipped the box. Into his waiting palm fell an innocuous-looking Nokia phone, green-glass screen utterly blank. Dead. _Maybe it's some sort of joke, _Thomas hazarded nervously, holding the phone cautiously, as if it would fade like a mirage if he held it too tightly.  
Just as he was about to put it on his desk and forget about it, it rang, despite having previously seemed to be switched off. Automatically he flipped it open and held it to his ear, only thinking about the absurdity of the situation once he'd done it.

"Hello?" he said huskily, wishing he had a glass of water or something, swallowing hard to compensate for it. He wasn't expecting a reply, but –

"_Hello, Neo. Do you know who this is?" _He did not know that voice, but he somehow found himself identifying its owner.

"Morpheus?"

"_Yes." Oh, my God. _He felt his chest constrict with something akin to fear. _"I've been looking for you, Neo." _ Thomas took a deep, silent breath, trying to keep calm when his instincts were screaming at him to throw the phone as far away as possible, run from the building and hide at home, where nothing strange could touch him ever again. But, at the same time, he needed this. Something stronger than fear held him rigid, pressed the phone to his ear with an eagerness that he couldn't explain. "_I don't know if you're ready to see what I want to show you, but, unfortunately, you and I have run out of time." _Morpheus' voice was level and calm, but something in his words hinted at a crisis on the horizon. "_They're coming for you, Neo, and I don't know what they're going to do."_

_They're watching you, Neo… _Trinity's words from the night before came drifting back to him, a mocking reminder. He'd been so desperate for information last night that he'd failed to recognise the danger he was in. She had been his warning, and this was what she had foretold.

"Who's coming for me?" Morpheus' next words opened up a pit of pure terror deep within him.

"_Stand up and see for yourself." Oh, no. No, no, no._

"What, now?" Hysterical disbelief crept into his tone; this was too surreal. This was the kind of thing that happened in films, in books, not to people like him.

"_Yes." _The voice on the other end of the phone now carried a sharp edge of impatience. Thomas began to rise from his seat, unsure what to expect. "_Do it slowly," _ Morpheus cautioned him; he immediately halted and began standing far more cautiously than he had been. _"The elevator." _He looked where he was told. The secretary, an attractive woman who often flirted with him in the mornings on the rare occasions he made it into work on time, was standing beside a trio of official-looking men in dark glasses, flanked by police officers. Dispassionately, she pointed out his cubicle to the group; their eyes met for a split second before he regained enough awareness to duck, curling into his filing cabinet as if it could somehow shield him.

"Oh, shit!" he gasped. This was not happening. This could not be happening. It was a dream, it had to be. Any minute now he was going to wake up back in his poorly-made bed, still horrifically late but at least not about to be arrested. Or shot.

"_Yes," _repeated Morpheus, vague amusement colouring his tone.

"What do they want from me?" Thomas demanded.

"_I don't know, but if you don't want to find out, I suggest you get out of there._"

"How?" If he moved from where he was, they'd spot him for sure. He wasn't a particularly fast runner, and he had no way of fighting them off.

"_I can guide you, but you must do exactly as I say." _That sounded about as safe as simply running for it, but it was his best bet right now. He nodded, realised that there was no way that Morpheus could have seen it, and responded with a shaky "Okay."

"_The cubicle across from you is empty." _He positioned himself, ready to bolt. So many things could go wrong here: he could trip, he could somehow be too slow, they could be closer and spot him before he had the chance to hide again.

"But…what if they…?"

"_Go, now!" _Morpheus' voice erased all further thoughts from his mind; without thinking, he ran for it, keeping as close to the floor as he could. Adrenaline pumped through his veins, tainting the back of his mouth with the copper taste of panic. His hands were shaking; it was a struggle to hold the phone.

"_Stay here for just a moment." _He nodded again, breathless, waiting. They were right there, right beside him, and any minute now they were going to look down and spot him, he was going to _die…_

"_When I tell you…" _Again, Morpheus' imperious, serene voice broke in on his thoughts and he immediately snapped to attention, all thoughts banished from his head. Move now, think about it later. "…_Go to the end of the row, head for the office at the end of the hall. Stay as low as you can." _His heart was pounding so hard he could barely hear, but he managed to nod. His body tensed as he awaited his next command.

"_Go." _Thomas ran for it, aware of the sting of several gazes but nobody followed him, so he was safe for now.  
The office was small, the desk in the corner populated by photographs of somebody else's children. So mundane, so everyday, they looked almost out-of-place in such a bizarre situation. He closed the door, and resisted the urge to drop to his knees. His shirt was damp with an icy panic-sweat, but finally he could breathe again.

"_Good." _Thomas exhaled, but something told him that he wasn't going to like what was to come. "_Outside there is a scaffold." Yep, I was right. _Still, he let Morpheus guide him as far as opening the window on the far left before his survival instinct pulled him back like a safety harness.

"_You can use the scaffold to get to the roof." _ How many floors up was he? He looked down, and decided he was better off not knowing.

"No way! No way, this is crazy." He backed away from the window, pacing as the adrenaline in his veins threatened to consume his entire body. He felt like screaming, or just blindly running for it; he'd always hated feeling cornered. Hated feeling out of his depth, and now he was so far out of it he doubted he'd see the surface again anytime soon.

"_There are two ways out of this building." _Instead of calming him this time, Morpheus' voice just made him feel even more powerless. His mind spun, wheeling around uselessly like a rat trapped in a cage. "_One is that scaffold, the other is in their custody." What a fan-fucking-tastic set of choices! _Thomas thought mutinously. He didn't have a hope of making it to the roof without killing himself, but handing himself in to the authorities, after all that he'd done…? That was suicide of another kind. _"You take a chance either way. I leave it to you." _The line went dead. _No, no, no! Come back! _There was absolutely no way he was still doing this.

"This is insane." Somehow, his body was moving without his consent, opening the window up, climbing up onto the sill. "Why is this happening to me? What'd I do?" He continued muttering to himself as he prepared for what was probably the stupidest stunt he'd ever attempted. "I'm nobody. I didn't do anything." He risked another glance down, and instantly regretted it. "I'm gonna die." He climbed slowly out onto the ledge, trying to fight against the wind that threatened to throw him off-balance every second, lurching back to grab at the window frame as he almost fell. Images of his own bloody and imminent death swarmed in his head as he slowly edged his way round, clinging to the side of the building. He could see the scaffold… he just had no idea how to get to it. He knew what he had to do: climb round the jutting piece of wall to the ledge on the other side. But there was nothing to hang on to, nothing to stop him from falling if he lost his balance.  
He wondered how it would look from an outsider's perspective if he fell. _Just another conspiracy-theorist who cracked up trying to beat the system. Another coward's suicide. _Slowly, he tried to edge his foot over… **No.** Vertigo struck, and only when he'd realised that he wasn't actually falling did he let out a cry. The phone fell from his hand, to shatter several hundred feet below. Bile rose in his throat as it struck him just how close he'd come to meeting the same fate.

The sudden realisation was as crippling as it was relieving. His throat was almost too tight to form the words, his body trembling so hard it was a wonder he could stay upright. "I can't do this."

* * *

Nobody thought to notice the silent figure dressed in black, perched impossibly still on a motorbike. Nobody gave her a passing glance. Trinity was grateful for that.  
She watched, cold dread pooling in her stomach, as Neo was led from the building by a pair of Agents, and forced into a car. She pressed her lips together as one of the Agents stared at her for a few more seconds than was necessary, but said nothing, remained utterly still.  
This was bad. More than bad – this could spell disaster for him, for all of them. She wasn't exactly sure if she believed in the prophecy as fiercely as Morpheus did, but regardless, they needed Neo.  
The car door slammed. She wished that there was some way she could turn around, fight back, rescue him, but she couldn't. There was no sense in both of them getting killed.

"Shit," she muttered to herself, and sped away before her conscience could make her change her mind.

* * *

**I'm not sure that this doesn't count as cheating, to be honest, but people seemed to like Mindfields, so I'm just gonna roll with it. I plan on giving the wonderful pill scene the same treatment, if not tonight then sometime this week, so prepare yourselves for that. As you read this, I'm working on another ambitious Matrix story, possibly multi-chapter... time will tell. No idea when it'll be up, though, so don't get excited. Finally, if you have any requests, prompts, or anything you want me to try my hand at, let me know, as I'd love to try some prompted writing for a change. ****  
Until I write again… **


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